Today, Internet marketers routinely apply the discipline of “search engine optimization” (SEO) to web pages in order to achieve maximum exposure to search engine users. SEO techniques for web page optimization can often be reduced to rule-based best practices.
With the rise of “news search” engines, a similar opportunity exists for optimizing news article and press release. Industry data shows that more users now read online news than print media, and major search engines now routinely mix news articles and content with Web search results. In response, a small number of SEO professionals have begun successfully applying SEO techniques to news articles and press releases. However, the majority of news and PR professionals today are non-technical, and are intimidated by the variety of SEO tools and techniques needed to optimize content and track the results.